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50 posts. Alias of Steven Purcell.


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The known universe

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298. Mind spy-You gain the ability to perceive the world not only as you perceive it but also as the target of this spell perceives, using all of the targets senses, even if you do not possess the same sensory capabilities as the target.

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297. Spell conduit-Requires 4 to 8 other casters of any full casting class. All other casters involved expend a spell slot of a given level as a standard action. All spell slots expended must be of the same level. The caster who cast spell conduit then channels the spell energy as a destructive blast of power dealing 1d6xthe number of other casters involved damage per level of the expended spell slots, plus additional points of damage equal to the CL of the caster of spell conduit. As an example, if a 10th level caster had assistance from 4 other 10th level casters and each other caster expended a 5th level spell slot the spell would do 4x5x1d6+10=20d6+10 damage to a target.

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296. Reflecting field-The spell conjures a glowing field of energy around the caster. This field deflects all projectile weapons (including boulders thrown by giants and other unusual projectiles) as well as targeted ranged spells away from the caster for one round per CL. In addition up to 3 such attacks each round rebound on the attacker and strike the attacker at the same bonus the attacker originally used.

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ulgulanoth wrote:
why not travel back to the point when the idea that women were inferior to men and remove it from history all together?

Practically EVERY culture has had that in some form or another in history; China, India, Japan as well as the west, so yeah not really workable-good impulse but not really workable.

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Getting amphibians in the mood

Smounds

Putting the "E" in extortion?

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Cats can't be walked

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I agree with the "it's a non-issue" crowd and the IOC won't investigate either

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Talk about irony

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Nasty Pajamas wrote:
Steven Purcell wrote:
Is the world getting sadder?

What they measured (maybe) was the happiness of bloggers and song writers, NOT the general public.

True enough just though it might catch some interest.

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And you thought your local dump was bad...

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Is the world getting sadder?

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Sorry to threadjack but how did the pony (Sebastian) wind up with the pony avatar and the Bella Sara Charter Superscriber tag?

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Set wrote:

The 'two sizes classes larger' thing is the same thing that Shillelagh, a 1st level Druid spell, does. It's okay, but nothing spectacular.

If it were applied to a Longsword, it would raise the weapon to 3d6, and be much more exciting, and if the cost were 'broken down' to include this shillelagh effect, the effects would vary hugely based on what weapon got the enchantment. A halflings dagger would go from 1d3 to 1d6, and it would be less than sexy. A humans greatsword would go from 2d6 to 3d8, which would be much nicer.

As someone who has played a twin-short-sword-using Fighter, I'd be thrilled with a cheaped out version that only enhanced the damage by one size category. A 'half-shillelagh.' :)

Set I don't see the sun blade as a problem either but one thing to clarify: it doesn't strike like a weapon 2 categories larger rather it is wielded like a short sword and hits as hard as a bastard sword Link Which means that to answer Hogarths idea of Sun X weapon simply delete the cost of the bastard sword from the things price and put in the price of the larger of the two weapons you would be using as your referents.

OGL examples:

(Larger weapon and smaller weapon)

Larger weapon provides damage figures and cost for the base weapon before masterwork and magic are factored in; smaller weapon provides ease of wielding)

Longsword and dagger
Bastard sword and short sword
Greatsword and longsword
Kukri and Falchion

Dwarven waraxe and handaxe
Greataxe and Battleaxe

Light crossbow and hand crossbow

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I've downloaded some books for Microsoft Reader and I want to store the files on a USB key so that if my computer crashes I won't lose them but I don't know where the files would be saved, so if anyone knows I would appreciate information.

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These can help with the AC situation and since they provide an armour bonus to AC it keeps the armour wearers from using these and allows the non-armour wearing characters to keep up in AC and if you use the bracers with enhancements rule sidebar from arms and equipment that can undercut some of the problems.

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I have another prehistoric animal to add to the quasi dire animal list: the dire snake-Titanoboa!

Actually one other thought regarding dire animals and dinosaurs: the dire animals in the MM had good will saves and possibly other differences from normal animals-could dinosaurs be given good will saves and the other changes to effectively make them dire animals as well? Just curious.

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I had an idea relating to the undead ... what if all of the undead creatures were templates instead of just basic monsters? So you'd have bodak, morhg, mummified, ghoul, wight, wraith, shadow, and spectre templates in addition to ghost, vampire, lich and skeleton and zombie Here's my reasoning: if a halfling or a gnome got killed by a wights energy drain would it upon rising as a new wight suddenly double in height and octuple its weight to become the regular wight entry? Now halflings and gnomes would most likely not be so vicious normally as to risk becoming a morhg (leaving the Jerren from BoVD out of the discussion); Pathfinder goblins, on the other hand...

I know that bodak ghoulish and ghastly templates were printed in Dragon Compendium and wight, spectral, wraith, mummified, and umbral templates were printed in Savage Species and that neither of those sources are OGC but I still think the idea could be worth investigating with your own approach. Actually in so doing you could add that one of the special qualities gained upon becoming undead would be profane resilience (or some other sufficiently cool and appropriate name of your choice): HDxCha modifier bonus hit point s to solve the anemic HP issue.

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Sueki Suezo wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:

So, let us assume that there will be dinosaurs in the Pathfinder Bestiary. A relatively safe assumption, since every edition of the game's core monster book has had them since 1st edition, yes?

So, working on that assumption, I would love to hear folks answer the following questions:

1) How many dinosaurs is the right amount to do a good show of it?

1) Deinonychus

2) Tyranosaurus
3) Petrosaur
4) Triceratops
5) Anklyosaurus
6) Elasmosaurus

James Jacobs wrote:
2) What four dinosaurs would you hope to see in the book more than any other?

1) Deinonychus

2) Petrosaur
3) Triceratops
4) Elasmosaurus

Petrosaurs? Are those the ones that own the big drilling companies and go to various seemingly inhospitable regions finding the liquid remains of long dead life? Yeah I know you meant pterosaurs but still figured I'd try to get a joke out of it.

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Callous Jack wrote:
Thraxus wrote:

You may need to adjust the size of the current dire animals to better fit the size of the prehistoric megafauna.

Edit:
For megafauna I see these possibilities:
Dire Wolf = Dire Wolf
Dire Tiger = Smilodon
Dire Boar = Daeodon (formerly Dinohyus)
Dire Bear = Arctodus (who I think is bigger than a cave bear)
Dire Lion = American Lion (or Cave Lion)
Also Megalania should be the "dire" version of the monitor lizard.

The Dire Rhino could be the Elasmotherium.

As long as we're talking about prehistoric mammals, I'd like to put in requests for the Andrewsarchus(possibly the largest land-dwelling carnivorous mammal known), the Doedicurus (a Glyptodon similar to the Ankylosaurus) and the Entelodont (7-ft. tall killer pigs!).

And just because I loved them as a kid, the Chalicotherium and the Brontotherium.

Add my vote for Andrewzarchus (and delete the possibly from that description-it was the largest mammalian land carnivore ever) Hyaenodon, Elasmotherium, Doedicurus and Indricotherium (one term for brontotherium)would all be good as well. WRT the elasmotherium, smilodon, hyaenodon and maybe or two others there are already 3.5 OGL stats for these guys in Necromancer Games Tome of Horrors line-these could potentially be useful. Dire tiger = smilodon would work.

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Erik Mona wrote:

The current Epic Level rules are a mess.

The way to make the game more mythic in scope is not to make it more bloated with math.

So if Paizo does an "Epic Level" book, it will probably be a complete re-do. With that in mind, I'm very curious to hear what people think about the idea of play beyond level 20.

What are you looking for conceptually?

What are you looking for mechanically?

If you're skeptical, what can we do that might get you to give this one a try?

Any deal breakers?

I'm going to take a particular approach with my response and somewhat break the problem down into sections since there are parts that work and parts that don't.

Conceptually some basic info on ideas of HOW to run an epic level game with a particular (rule the world, travel the planes or what have you) approach would be some what useful but there is a catch: a fair amount of such material would need to be fairly bare bones since each table will be deciding on the associated meat and the game designers just can't anticipate every possible permutation of game out there. So there have been great ideas for epic campaigns proposed here but they will depend as much on each groups individual choices as anything from a rulebook.

As far as the math issue goes its a curse of high level play: the higher you get the more elements you need to deal with be it class features, feats, spells, magic items or special attacks.

Mechanically, most of the present skill uses and feats seem fine (potentially some of the feats could even be moved to high level pre-epic but that is a separate discussion). As far as spells go keep the existing end effects of the epic spells just change the exact mechanics to get there to more resemble pre-epic casting. Magic items could use a streamlining on the pricing and maybe move some to the high pre-epic field but otherwise they are okay. The whole "epic is something totally distinct" idea is an interesting one but it could be a pain to make work. For classes reinstate the pre-epic save and attack bonus progressions AND then test the heck out of it to make sure that there is still a reasonable ability for different classes to survive challenges to such progressions (if you hit a party with an attack that relies on a particular saving throw some classes the save will be a PoC and for others it could take a miracle not to get killed).

Trying it out before final release (Alpha and Beta style playtests) would work nicely to dispel skepticism.

Dealbreakers no

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James Jacobs wrote:

So, let us assume that there will be dinosaurs in the Pathfinder Bestiary. A relatively safe assumption, since every edition of the game's core monster book has had them since 1st edition, yes?

So, working on that assumption, I would love to hear folks answer the following questions:

1) How many dinosaurs is the right amount to do a good show of it?

2) What four dinosaurs would you hope to see in the book more than any other?

3) How important is it to maintain all five dinosaurs from the MM? Can we get away with just one dromaeosaurid (probably the deinonychus), with the assumption that one can make a megaraptor by simply advancing the deinonychus?

4) If #3 above is true, would it better to replace the deinonychus with the velociraptor? Velociraptor is more well-known these days, and it's easy enough to say that a velociraptor advanced up one size category is a deinonychus.

5) Dinosaurs don't have to be boring. They don't have to simply be hit points and a bite attack. Currently living animals have a wide range of biodiversity, with special attacks like poison, constriction, electricity generation, stunning attacks, ranged attacks (like tarantulas flicking poison hairs, archerfish spitting balls of water, or cobras spitting poison), and the like. Would it be too strange to give some dinosaurs a bit more flavor by giving them attacks that aren't necessarily supported by the fossil record?

6) Is there anything in particular with how dinosaurs have been stattud up in the game before that rubs you the wrong way that you'd like to see changed?

1. 6-8 as a start and see if you can squeeze in more.

2. T-Rex, Triceratops, a dromaeosaur (velociraptor, deinonychus, utahraptor) and either an ankylosaur or stegosaur or possibly a sauropod. And for the dinosaur contemporaries that weren't actually dinosaurs (nitpicky I know but accurate nonetheless) a pterosaur (possibly pteranodon but there are quite a few to choose from), an icthyosaur, a plesiosaur and a mosasaur.

3. That works but call the advanced one utahraptor blast it! Actually if we were to apply this to all the dinosaurs (something that I would NOT agree with but... use alioramus for tyrannosaurs, protoceratops for the the ceratopsians, vulcanodon or massospondylus for a sauropod, velociraptor for a dromaeosaur, kentrosaurus for a stegosaur and maybe scelidosaurus for an ankylosaur and give rules for advancing them to the size of their more famous larger cousins AND present a rule that advanced versions of creatures CAN be taken as animal companions/special mounts.

4. Velociraptor would work but realize that it would be a SMALL creature by the size category rules and would be advanced to medium for deinonychus and to large for utahraptor.

5. It has been pointed out several times but give T-Rex a komodo dragon like diseased bite, augmented crit and a more restrictive swallow whole, give sauropods trample and tail whip attacks, stegosaurs a tail spikes type attack, and ankylosaurs a tail club attack and possibly (with a nodosaur variant) a shoulder gore attack. Dromaeosaurs possibly get rend and a wounding type ability.

6. Can't think of anything. But for the art feathers as others have said at least for the dromaeosaurs.

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Erik Mona wrote:

In July we officially kick off the Pathfinder RPG with the release of the Pathfinder Bestiary. The massive Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook follows in August, but beyond that we have not yet announced additional rules support for the game.

That support IS coming, and we're in the process of finalizing what form it will take.

The current plan is to release between 2-3 hardcover rulebooks per year, including additional Pathfinder Bestiaries.

What form would you like these books to take? Would you be interested in subscribing to such a line, provided the books cost somewhere around $35 a pop?

What titles/ideas would you like to see us explore?

We're all worried about rules bloat. What is your opinion of new classes and races?

Are you as tired of prestige classes as I am?

Discuss.

For subscriptions IF there was a pdf only subscription yes; if not no (a bit short on bookshelf space, but plenty on the hard drive :))

2-3 seems reasonable.

One point to make here before it goes further is that no matter what gets published (monsters, PrCs, base classes, races etc.) there will be people who love or loath either the general concept or the specific execution so bear in mind to all other posters: the staff'll try their best but won't please everyone.

Now that that is out of the way...

Ideas I would like to see: Epic, Psionics (could go with either a tweaking of the present system or something totally new), new bestiaries (guaranteed to happen but felt like saying it anyway), Complete type books with more of an emphasis on flavour ideas for existing classes but SOME new crunch as well, generic environment books covering terrain like mountains and marshes WotC didn't get to with Frostburn through Dungeonscape and HoB and HoH. A DM focused worldbuilding book to contain mass battle rules, vehicle rules, economics, city building, governance, laws

New races and classes and variants of existing races and classes (either through specialist classes, substitution levels, and/or 3.x UA type variant class features all work) are fine to me. A flight capable player race would definitely be welcome.

With PrCs probably every single PrC out there has at least some support so be judicious about PrCs but don't kill them off completely either.

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Heaven lasts long and Earth abides
What is the secret of their durability?
Is it because they do not live for themselves
That they endure so long?

-Lao Tzu

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MMSample wrote:
Where is a picture of Calistria???

Gods and Magic page 9

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1 person marked this as a favorite.

Actually it is kind of interesting: among bees, wasps (and some ants for that matter) only the females have stingers as they are modified ovipositors and in the communal wasps and bees most females are sterile except for the queens, but in solitary species the stings work both as ovipositors and as weapons and in fact some wasps are parasitic, disabling a host bug with a sting and then laying an egg inside it using the stinger and the resultant larva will eat the host alive when it hatches. So in some ways wasps can be an excellent symbol for Calistria and the wasp association definitely works (to me anyway).

To expand on the point in a way: Urgathoa has a fly as a symbol and certain flies (horseflies, blackflies and deerflies, as well as mosquitoes) only the females bite as they need the blood (or flesh, in some cases) as nourishment to successfully lay their eggs. So insects can be excellent deity symbols (that isn't even adding in the Red Mantis material to the discussion).

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I saw that undead will have d8s rather than d12s and a few thoughts sprang to mind: 1) this will be a bit of a backwards compatibility problem; 2) will undead therefore get an average BAB or is the BAB HD link only for character classes; and 3) will dragons keep their d12 HD?

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Pendagast wrote:

More undead and more powerful undead, where is my death knight?

I think all the monsters in the first book should be ones that primarily exist on the prime material plane.

For those who want to go plane hopping, those monsters should be in another book (like githyanki and efreet)

Animals (dogs, dinosaurs etc) should be in their own book.

Classic monsters should be in the core monster book.
Keep mind flayers (even though the go astral they do most of their hunting on prime material)

no freaky or zany monsters, just classic ones (no need for mountain giants, thats a waste when they are just bigger hairy hill giants)

PLEASE simplify dragons, dragons by color and alignment are stupid.

I always house rule just because the dragon is red doesnt mean its evil.

ALL dragons should go off the same size and age rules, color is random, as is intelligence. Some are animalistic, some are smart, speak and cast spells (obviously by the time a dragon reaches great wyrm isnt smart enough to be casting spells and talking)

But a young dragon could be dumb enough (say int 3) to just roar an bite and be savage, where as the same age dragon could have an intelligence of 10 and speak a language.

Shape changing, spellcasting, "super dragon spell like abilites" etc should be reserved for the old and powerful, thus allowing dragons to "evlove" from monster to a "NPC Race"

This would give us dragons 5th level parties could fight all the way through dragons that could kill off a party of 5 20th level characters.
Without keeping a 5th level party to fighting only young white dragons.

A few of these ideas while interesting won't be happening - death knights, mind flayers, and githyanki are all Product Identity for Wizards and thus are NOT available for Pathfinder to use, planehopping races (such as Celestials and Fiends, but the Slaad being Wizard's PI are not available for use) are staying in, the dragons are probably going to follow the rules and stats set out on D20 SRD and thus be unchanged from present (although I would support a randomization of the alignments but keep all the other stats as they are), and animals are in because they are often needed for familiars, companions and summoning spells and other purposes.

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Set wrote:
Stereofm wrote:
flash_cxxi wrote:
Set wrote:
The Might Dragon is detailed in MMVI, between the entries for 'Light Dragon' and 'Wight Dragon.'
I thought the Sight Dragon was in there before the Wight Dragon? I'll have to go back and re-read mine again now.
Wasn't this the Fight Dragon to begin with ?

Possibly the Blight Dragon or the Tight Dragon.

But definitely not the Right Dragon.

Don't forget the Height Dragon, Bright Dragon, and Slight Dragon.

Or the Perhaps Dragon.

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An inordinate fondness for beetles. JBS Haldane's response to a question about what his study of the natural world had revealed about its creator

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It has been said before but bears repeating: peaceful resolution to conflicts in the world, improved health for humanity across the world, preservation of the environment and hope for an even brighter future.

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Bumping thread to hopefully generate incentive for more of these SLA feats if Set is at all interested in doing so.

These look great Set.

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How much non-lethal (subdual, whatever) damage would your average snowball do, do you think? Started wondering about this owing to the weather here (50 cm (20 in) of snow predicted for the Toronto, ON area (we'll see if there is actually that much) and by the Snowball Sneak Attack OotS ornament illo on GitP from a couple years back.

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Drakli wrote:

I get the feeling I'm not as enthused about Daemons in Pathfinder as I ought to be for a couple of reasons:

1) The name. I'm pretty sure Daemon is pronounced like Demon, though I suppose I can differ them by pronouncing it Day-mon instead of Dee-mon, which is outside of actual traditional linguistic stuff for the word. I really miss Yugoloth. That was the one fiendish rename that I thought really really worked. Still, not a huge deal.

2) My favorite Daemons, the Ultraloths, Aranoloths, and those... tongueoloths, are closed content. It is worth noting, the Tome of Horrors does reference Ultradaemons and Arcanodaemons, even though they aren't statted in the book.

On the other hand, those Leukodaemons are pretty darn awesome.

Tongueloths are called canoloths just for the record. And my personal favourite among the yugoloths were the nycaloths. Green skin, two pairs of arms, big bat wings and usually a big friggin polearm.

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Bump to get thread revitalized

I can't think of anything to add to this at the moment, although something I would wonder about is what do they think fossils are in Golarion? In RL they called dinosaur fossils dragons or great buffalo, etc. before Sir Richard Owen came along and used the term dinosaurs.

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Set wrote:

This naturally leads me to conclude that my next Gnoll PC will go around telling people that he's really Sir Justin of Malebrionte, who died in single combat with a Vrock during the Third Mendevian Campaign, and was reincarnated by a whimsical gnomish druid ally.

Of course, he'll have an Int of 8 and act like a savage, eating his meat raw, shunning the concept of bathing, growling at people and eating bugs that he picks out of his fur, but he'll still *insist* that he's a reincarnated Paladin...

Except reincarnate only affects PHYSICAL ability scores not mental ones, so he would still be as cultured as before, unless you did a mental score affecting homebrew of reincarnate.

Actually, Gnoll was the second best choice of the 3.5 reincarnate list, with bugbear being the only better one, in terms of raw power. Although, an official comment on whether you get the monster HD and LA would be useful.

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Link

This is funny but if you are going to read the article, better to do it sooner rather than later - The Globe and Mail will occasionally lock articles.